


Annoying Monsters

by AshsHorrorShow



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Basically The Story of How Jonathan Got His Crows, Corvids, Gen, Seriously This Is Like The Last Thing I Will Write Involving Jon and His Crows I Swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 06:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11435544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshsHorrorShow/pseuds/AshsHorrorShow
Summary: When Jonathan walked into the Iceberg Lounge, he was expecting Oswald to hand him some mission. What he wasn't expecting was two birds.





	Annoying Monsters

Jonathan Crane very rarely came to the Iceberg Lounge.

Unlike a majority of the Gotham rogues, he wasn’t exactly rolling around in dough. He’d never been a rich man – even before he had made his debut as Scarecrow. The university had given him a very meager salary and he would always blow it on three things – rent/bills, enough food that he could scrape by for a month as long as he skipped a few meals here and there, and books. That fact didn’t really change much when he became the Scarecrow – except now, without his teaching job, he had basically no income coming in and he had to add all the chemicals he used for his fear toxin into his expenses (and occasionally payment for henchmen he hired every now and then). 

He wasn’t a traditional Gotham villain. Sure, when he was getting desperate and had absolutely no money, he would turn to thievery maybe pilfering from one of his victim’s wallets, or if he was feeling a little more ambitious, stealing from the bank like everyone else. But thieving wasn’t his gig. He was a researcher first and foremost. That was one thing he liked to establish. He was not some ordinary run of the mill criminal. Add that to the fact that public, grandiose sweeps of theft not only cut into research and formula-making time… but they also made the Batman or any of the other vigilantes crawling around the city aware of his presence and it made them hell-bent sniffing him out and sending him to Arkham before he could get anything done.

This made robbing banks almost pointless for him in a way. Usually, soon after he robbed them, he would be knocked to the ground by one of them and sent to Arkham and all of that cash he stole would be flushed away to its proper place. Now, he was sure there were smarter ways to go about his stealing methods and cash holding system. Edward Nygma was always jabbering to him about private banks and money laundering, which Jonathan was sure did get things done efficiently, but it was all a little too much for him.

Jonathan wasn’t needing to be a billionaire. He just wanted enough to scrape by. In order to do that very thing, he cut a lot of corners if it meant saving his money. He made his own costumes, he always found empty warehouses to set up a new base, he very rarely purchased henchmen, used cheaper fear toxin on those he wasn’t exactly aiming for, and used the more expensive brand on specific targets he wanted to teach a lesson.

And he never, ever went to the Iceberg Lounge.

There were many reasons for that. First one being that this kind of place wasn’t his type of thing. It was more something that people like Edward Nygma or Harleen Quinzel would enjoy. But for him, there was too much dress up, too loud music, too many people, too many INEBRIATED people… it was all too much for him. He would much rather spend his night curled into his house reading a book or brewing a new toxin formula then wasting time pretending he was more social than he actually was. Add that to the fact that Oswald’s admission prices were outrageous and he was willing to charge eight bucks a drink, Jonathan found he could go without. 

And while the various exotic creatures Oswald had milling around the place were fascinating to look at (especially the birds), they weren’t worth listening to Oswald brag about each individual one for five minutes each. 

So, as a rule, Jonathan decided to avoid the Iceberg Lounge like the plague.

But today was a different sort of an occasion. This time, Jonathan specifically had been invited to the Iceberg Lounge. Oswald had even went through the offer of giving him free drinks, free dessert, and free admission. That uncharacteristic generosity from the man already made Jonathan suspicious, as well as the fancy invitations vague explanation that Oswald wanted to “make an offer with him.”

Part of Jonathan had honestly wanted to refuse. Truth of the matter was that Jonathan didn’t like Oswald all that much. Again, Oswald Cobblepot was more a man like Edward Nygma’s scene – a rich and successful criminal mastermind/businessman who had an ego a mile long. Unfortunately, Jonathan simply didn’t jive with that type. Even with their personalities not exactly lining up, Jonathan was sure even if he could find a few similarities with the man, he’d still find the Penguin absolutely repugnant.

Everything about the man screamed of slimy deception, and Jonathan honestly didn’t trust the man as far as he could throw him (which was not at all). He knew Oswald had a rather bad history of betraying or harming business partners if he himself got some sort of benefit from it. He also knew the man was fair-weathered as hell and had a temper shorter than his actual height. Slight him in any sort of way, and one could not only lose all of their benefits with him… but they could also find themselves with a new foe hell-bent on riddling their body full of bullets. 

Jonathan felt like he was walking on eggshells whenever he was with the man, and after years of feeling a similar way with Great Grandma Keeny, he held a certain level of distaste for people like that.

But if he had learned anything in his years of being a rogue, it was that sometimes, he had to do things he didn’t necessarily want to do and deal with downright detestable people at times if it meant it benefitted him in the long-run… and Oswald’s benefits were too good to pass up.

Oswald had a very large stranglehold of territory in Gotham, rivalled only by the likes of Joker and Two-Face, and he had henchmen who guarded it well. Any rogue who didn’t have a good relation with Oswald would have a lot more trouble wandering around certain areas of the city without running into any of Penguin’s gun-wielding henchmen. If Jonathan wanted free access to affluent parts of the city, staying buddy-buddy with Oswald was really his best bet. 

Plus, Oswald would sometimes commission him for jobs and pay him rather generous sums of money for doing certain jobs or for selling over some of his fear toxin (Oswald had found it was a good truth serum for those he didn’t like). If Jonathan was being chased, he could use Oswald’s lounge as a temporary sanctuary (granted, he still had to pay the hefty admission sum but the knowledge that resource was there was nice). So Jonathan figured he could swallow his pride, go, and pretend to be a sociable person for an hour or two. 

Since Oswald was requesting him specifically and Jonathan couldn’t think of any reasons Oswald would have to be angry at him, he figured Oswald just wanted him to deal with someone who HAD pissed him off… which meant Jonathan would get paid to see people writhe in fear… so it wasn’t too bad of a deal.

So Jonathan walked himself to the Iceberg Lounge, allowing himself to be seated and served a glass of brandy and what looked to be a very foamy piece of cake. Picking at the cake noncommittally, Jonathan got straight to business with Oswald who was sitting poised across from him.

“What is your offer, Cobblepot?”

Jonathan was expecting a mission briefing of some kind. Some instructions and other jargon about whatever poor soul he was going to have to gas.

What he didn’t expect the other man to say was, “Please get these wretched monsters off of my hands.”

Jonathan’s face must have betrayed his confusion as Oswald quickly collected himself and cleared his throat. Raising his hands up apologetically, he said, “I apologize for the sudden er… outburst, but I am having a bit of a problem at the moment and I need your help. Now Crane, you like crows, correct?”

Jonathan felt another cloud of confusion but he decided to answer, “Yes, I think they are alright animals. Smart birds.” 

The look of excitement that came over Oswald’s face made Jonathan somewhat uncomfortable.

“Ah yes, good. So you might actually be interested in what I have to offer.”

All of a sudden one of the many doors in the Lounge opened and a horrible squawking and cawing noise filled the room as two henchmen walked in with a large birdcage. Inside the cage were two very unhappy crows, who were flapping their wings and voicing their distaste for the prison. They were making a racket and Jonathan couldn’t help but notice that both the henchmen and Oswald looked uncomfortable at the noise.

The henchmen laid the cage down on the table so Jonathan could get a better look at the twin terrors. Now that they had actually been placed down, they were making less noise… but not by much. They still let out sounds and hopped around unhappily in the cage, their feathers ruffled.

Oswald tugged on his collar uncomfortably and said, “Er… you see, I tried to add crows to my collections. A male and female, as you can see. I thought they would make a wonderful edition because crows are so smart and supposedly trainable … but these two… er, they have been giving me problems. You see, the thing is… I am good at training birds. I’ve had the patience to do it with several… but the problem with crows is while they are trainable, training them is very-“

“Hard,” Jonathan decided to finish for him. He knew from personal experience how hard corvids could be to train. Training that magpie to peck out that bully’s eye had taken him months and months of endless work. It was possible to train them, but it was hard, and required a lot of patience.

Oswald scowled at being interrupted but said, “Uh, yes. Very hard. And normally that wouldn’t be a concern but these two cause… quite the problems. They bother the other birds and they make noise and they grab stuff off my desk all the time. And since they are smarter than half of my henchmen, they manage to steal their food all the time –which I argue is more their problem than mine –but it seems like I might have to actually do something about it.”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow, “Why are you telling me? So you don’t want these two anymore. Why don’t you just release them out in the wild? They can blend in with all of the other crows flying around in Gotham.”

Oswald sighed, “Problem is they’ve been raised since birth around humans… and they know how to mess with humans too much. I trained them too well to so they rely on humans for everything. I fear if I let them out they will get themselves in trouble or something by attacking someone… and while I can’t necessarily care for these wretches, I don’t want them to go off and die.”

Oswald had always been a softie when it came to birds.

“That was where I was hoping you would come in…” Oswald said leadingly, throwing Jonathan a hopeful look. Jonathan finally got where he was coming from.

Jonathan had immediately felt the need to decline. He could barely take care of himself, much less two birds who even an avid bird-lover couldn’t handle. He was a busy man. He didn’t need squalling crows distracting him or causing him problems while he worked. 

But the more he thought about it… these two were already partially trained… and they already knew how to mess with a human. Jonathan thought back to that magpie he had trained so long ago. Sure the process had taken awhile… but he had managed to do it with only a bit of food. If he could train a magpie to peck a human’s eye out… who knew what he could get these two to do. He envisioned these two pecking Batman and Robin’s eyes out right after he was through with them… and the thought put a smile on his face.

Besides… he always had loads of stale food and other stuff he could throw to these guys. And think about it… a scarecrow with two trusty crow sidekicks. Really, the aesthetic fit itself. Certainly made more sense than Harley with her hyenas. 

With a bit of work (and he had plenty of time), he could get these two crows to be smarter and more able than half of the dumb henchmen he hired.

Acting on impulse for once in his life, Jonathan quickly said, “Sure.”

Oswald looked almost overjoyed, “Ah! I knew you would agree. Their names are-“

Jonathan interrupted, “Ah, that won’t be necessary. I already came up with names for them.”

“Oh uh… what then.”

Jonathan looked fondly at the two birds, picking pieces of the cake and feeding the two of them through the bars of the cage, saying, “Craw and Nightmare.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. This is like, the last thing I will write involving Jon and birds because honestly this is getting ridiculous. Part of me had considered not posting this simply because this is my third thing involving it... but I had it almost done and I still liked the idea so I decided to make this the final one and move on with my life.
> 
> This is also the third thing with Oswald I wrote this week, wtf. Oh well, poor guy needs more fanfiction. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. I love Craw and Nightmare. Wish they came back.
> 
> As always, critique is wanted and I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
